Back in 2021, we launched our Refer-a-Friend program, giving existing MIDAS customers a simple way to earn free months on their subscription just by recommending us to other organizations.

Since then, it’s remained one of the easiest ways to save on MIDAS. For every new organization that purchases or subscribes to MIDAS using your unique referral link, you both get one month free, with no limit on how many times you can do it.

Today, we’re making the program a little more flexible. Previously, a referral needed to result in a purchase within 60 days of your link being clicked in order to track. We’ve now extended that window to 90 days.

Why 90 days is better

Choosing a room booking system usually isn’t a decision one person makes alone, and it’s rarely made on the spot. A longer tracking window gives the organizations you refer more time to:

• Get budget signed off, particularly for schools, churches, and community groups working around fixed annual budgets or committee approval cycles.
• Loop in the other decision-makers who need to weigh in, whether that’s a facilities manager, a finance lead, or a board
• Try the free trial properly, rather than rushing a decision just to beat a tracking deadline.
• Compare us against other options at their own pace, and still come back once they’re ready.

In short, more time means more of your genuine referrals actually get credited, rather than quietly missing out because a decision took longer than 60 days to reach.

If you haven’t grabbed your free referral link yet, you can get yours right here.

Full Terms & Conditions apply.

The post We’ve extended Refer-a-Friend tracking to 90 days appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

Booking and scheduling should be quick. Yet checking whether a room is free, adding a booking, or pulling up next week’s schedule still usually means logging in, clicking through menus, and filling in forms. What if you could simply ask?

We are pleased to announce the new MIDAS MCP Server add-on, which lets you connect your MIDAS room and resource booking system directly to the AI assistant of your choice, including Claude, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini. Once connected, you can check availability, add and amend bookings, look up clients, manage resources, and even raise invoices, all through natural conversation.

What is an MCP server?

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect securely to other software and data sources. On its own, an AI assistant has no way to look things up in your systems or carry out actions in them. An MCP server bridges that gap. It exposes a defined set of “tools” that an AI assistant is allowed to use, so the assistant can read information from a connected system and, where permitted, make changes to it too.

Because MCP is an open standard, any AI platform that supports it can connect to a compatible MCP server. That means the MIDAS MCP Server is not tied to a single AI provider. You choose the assistant you already use and prefer, and connect it to MIDAS.

Book and manage rooms using plain English

Once the MIDAS MCP Server is enabled and connected to your AI assistant, everyday booking tasks become as simple as asking a question. For example, you could say:

• “Is the Boardroom free tomorrow afternoon?”
• “Book Studio 1 from 2pm to 4pm on Friday for a client meeting.”
• “Show me all bookings for Meeting Room 3 next week.”
• “Which rooms are available on Thursday morning for 20 people?”
• “Generate an invoice for last month’s confirmed bookings for Acme Ltd.”
• “Who is the client with the email address jane@example.com?”

Your AI assistant translates each request into the appropriate action, sends it to MIDAS, and replies in plain English. There are no menus to navigate and no forms to complete for these routine tasks.

A booking and scheduling system that works with your AI agent

If you have been searching for a booking, scheduling, or calendar system that integrates with your chosen AI agent or platform, the MIDAS MCP Server is designed for exactly that. It turns MIDAS into a fully AI-accessible booking system, without locking you into any one AI provider.

This opens the door to more than just chat. Because any MCP-compatible AI assistant or agent can connect, you can build assistants and automations around your booking data. Think of a front-of-house assistant that answers availability enquiries, or an agent that drafts invoices from the week’s confirmed bookings. If a platform supports MCP, it can work with MIDAS.

Availability

The MIDAS MCP Server is an optional add-on available from MIDAS v4.43 (or later). It’s available for both cloud-hosted an self-hosted editions of our booking system.

Existing customers (running MIDAS v4.43 or later) can add the MCP Server add-on to their system via mid.as/upgrade.

New customers can obtain MIDAS with the optional MCP Server add-on via mid.as/pricing.

Which AI platforms are supported?

The MIDAS MCP Server works with any AI assistant or platform that supports the Model Context Protocol, including:

• Claude (Anthropic), via both Claude Desktop and the Claude web and mobile apps.
• ChatGPT (OpenAI), via its Connectors feature.
• Google Gemini, via the Gemini CLI.
• Other MCP-compatible platforms, including a growing range of AI-powered tools and agent platforms.

Support for MCP is expanding quickly across the AI industry, so the list of compatible platforms continues to grow.

Built with security and control in mind

Giving an AI assistant access to your booking system is a significant step, so our MIDAS MCP Server puts you firmly in control:

• Read-only mode – Start by allowing enquiries and availability checks only. The AI can look things up but cannot change anything. Enable write access later, when you are ready.
• Secure by default – Connections require HTTPS and are protected by a confidential MCP key that you generate and can revoke at any time.
• IP restrictions – Optionally limit access to specific IP addresses.
• Your existing rules still apply – Every action taken through the MCP server respects the same permissions and business rules that already govern your MIDAS system. You can even configure the MCP to inherit the permissions of a specific user account.
• A clear activity trail – Actions taken through the MCP server can be recorded in your MIDAS Recent Activity log, so you can see what was done.

Everything you can do

The MIDAS MCP Server provides a comprehensive set of tools covering the full range of day-to-day booking and administration tasks, including:

• Checking venue and resource availability
• Adding, amending, deleting, and restoring bookings
• Approving and rejecting pending booking requests
• Looking up and managing clients
• Managing venues, venue groups, and bookable resources
• Checking consumable stock levels
• Raising, amending, and generating invoices
• Sending notifications and emailing clients

Read-only tools retrieve information only, while write tools can create and change data. If you run the server in read-only mode, only the read-only tools will be available.

Getting started

Setting up the MIDAS MCP Server takes just a few minutes:

1. Get the MCP Server addon (mid.as/upgrade for existing customers, mid.as/pricing for new customers)
2. Enable the MCP Server addon and connect your AI assistant (here’s how)
3. Start asking your AI assistant about your bookings.

Full instructions for each supported platform, including Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, are available in our documentation.

Read the MIDAS MCP Server documentation and get started »

The future of booking is conversational

AI assistants are quickly becoming part of everyday working life. With the MIDAS MCP Server, your booking and scheduling system is ready to be part of that shift. Whether you want to check availability at a glance, speed up routine admin, or build richer automations around your booking data, the MIDAS MCP Server connects MIDAS to the AI tools you already use.

Existing MIDAS customers can find out more and get set up today on our MIDAS MCP Server pages. New to MIDAS? Discover why MIDAS is the flexible, affordable choice for room and resource booking, now with AI built in.

The post Introducing the MIDAS MCP Server: Manage Your Bookings With Any AI Assistant appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

Managing bookings usually means clicking through calendars, forms, and menus. What if you could just say what you wanted instead?

MIDAS v4.43 introduces Voice Control – a hands-free way to navigate your booking system, manage reservations, and take care of everyday admin tasks, just by speaking naturally.

How it works

Click the microphone icon, say what you want, and MIDAS takes care of the rest. No rigid command syntax to memorise, no button hunting – just plain English.

Want to check what’s on today? Just say:

“What’s on today?”

Need to book the Guest Room for 11am tomorrow?

“Book the guest room tomorrow from 11am to 2pm”

Looking for an invoice?

“Show me invoice MIDAS0155”

That’s it. MIDAS listens, understands, and acts.

What you can do with your voice

Voice Control covers the tasks you reach for most:

• Navigate your calendar – jump to any date, step forward or back by days, weeks or months, or say “show next Friday’s bookings”
• Add bookings – specify a venue, date, time, and client all in one sentence
• Modify, move, or copy bookings – reschedule a booking to a new time, duplicate it to another room, or move it to next week
• Delete bookings – cancel with a single spoken command, with a confirmation step to prevent mistakes
• Manage reminders and availability watches – add a reminder or a watch for any booking without leaving the calendar view
• Generate and view invoices – create an invoice for a booking, or jump straight to an existing one by reference number
• Search – find bookings, clients, or invoices matching a keyword
• Check notifications – ask for your messages, reminders, or availability watches
• Jump to admin settings – open any settings page by name, from user management to security options
• Sign out, view statistics, check recent activity – and more

MIDAS is also flexible about how you phrase things. Say “cancel,” “delete,” or “remove” – they all work. Ask for a booking “in the guest room at 2pm” or “at 2pm in the guest room” – either order is understood. You can even say “please” or “could you” if that’s how you naturally talk; MIDAS will politely ignore the pleasantries and get straight to the task.

We’ve also put together a comprehensive Voice Command Reference guide for you to explore.

Two ways to talk to MIDAS

Voice Control supports two modes to suit how you like to work:

• Momentary mode – press and speak a single command, then release. Ideal for quick, one-off actions.
• Toggle (“Hey MIDAS”) mode – activate listening once and issue a stream of commands hands-free, prefixing each with “Hey MIDAS.” Great for busy front-desk environments where reaching for a mouse isn’t always convenient.

When MIDAS asks for confirmation – for example, before deleting a booking – you can simply respond “yes” or “cancel” without needing to repeat the wake phrase.

Built with the same permissions you already trust

Voice Control respects your existing MIDAS permission structure. If a user doesn’t have permission to delete bookings, manage users, or view invoices, voice commands for those actions are blocked in exactly the same way the standard interface already protects them. Nothing new to configure – it simply works within the access rules you’ve already set up.

Give it a try

Voice Control is available from MIDAS v4.43 (and later) for all users with the appropriate permissions.

You can also try it out right now in our FREE public demo.

Just look for the microphone icon in your MIDAS toolbar, click it, and start talking.

Whether you’re juggling a packed calendar or just want a faster way to get things done, Voice Control is designed to get out of your way – so you can focus on the booking, not the interface.

The post Just Say It: MIDAS Now Understands Voice Commands appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

If your MIDAS booking system is currently configured to send emails via Microsoft’s SMTP servers, it’s time to take action.

Microsoft has announced that it will be retiring support for SMTP AUTH (also known as “Basic Authentication” for SMTP) in 2026. Once this change takes effect, any application which is configured to use Microsoft SMTP endpoints for outgoing mail will no longer be able to send emails.

For MIDAS, if you’re using Microsoft’s SMTP servers, this means that booking confirmations, reminder emails, and other automated notifications sent from MIDAS would silently fail – potentially disrupting your organization’s scheduling and communications.

Here’s what you need to know, and what steps to take before the deadline.

What Is SMTP AUTH and Basic Authentication?

SMTP AUTH is a method that allows applications to authenticate with a mail server using a username and password in order to send outgoing email. It has been widely used for decades.

Why is Microsoft removing Basic Authentication and SMTP AUTH?

It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s decision to retire SMTP AUTH is driven by their own platform strategy around modern authentication – it doesn’t mean that sending email via SMTP is inherently insecure. Under the hood, SMTP works the same way it always has, and the username/password authentication used by SMTP hasn’t fundamentally changed. What Microsoft is retiring is the ability to authenticate to their mail servers this way, as they push users towards OAuth-based access within their ecosystem. MIDAS does not currently support OAuth, but this is not a concern — there are plenty of reliable, independent SMTP providers that continue to support standard SMTP authentication without any issues.

Are You Affected?

You may be affected if your MIDAS booking system’s outgoing email settings are currently configured to use any of the following SMTP servers:

• smtp-mail.outlook.com — used by personal Outlook.com/Hotmail accounts
• smtp.live.com — an older endpoint also associated with Outlook.com/Hotmail/Live accounts
• smtp-legacy.office365.com — a temporary fallback endpoint for Microsoft customers that stilled relied on SMTP AUTH after the initial Basic Auth deprecation push.
• smtp.office365.com — An Exchange Online endpoint used by Microsoft 365 services.
• outlook.office365.com — another Exchange Online endpoint sometimes used in place of smtp.office365.com

You can check your current email sending settings via MIDAS Admin Options > Email.

The good news is that the fix is straightforward, and we’ve made it as easy as possible for MIDAS customers.

For Cloud-Hosted MIDAS Customers

If you’re on our cloud-hosted platform, we have the simplest possible solution for you: switch to MIDAS’s built-in Zero-Configuration Email Delivery.

This option requires no SMTP credentials, no third-party accounts, and no technical configuration on your part. MIDAS handles email delivery on your behalf, so you don’t need to worry about SMTP servers at all. You can find full details on how to enable this feature in our dedicated guide:

👉 Zero-Configuration Email Delivery for MIDAS

We strongly recommend all cloud-hosted customers make this switch at their earliest convenience – and certainly before Microsoft’s 2026 deadline.

For Self-Hosted MIDAS Customers

If you run MIDAS on your own server or hosting environment, you’ll need to update your outgoing mail settings to use an alternative SMTP provider. Fortunately, there are several excellent options available, many of which offer generous free tiers that would suit most MIDAS installations.

We recommend the following providers:

SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO is a reliable, cloud-based email delivery service with a free tier that allows up to 1,000 emails per month. It’s straightforward to set up and works seamlessly with MIDAS’s outgoing mail settings. Simply create a free account, verify your sending domain, and update your MIDAS SMTP settings with the credentials provided.

Mailgun

Mailgun is another popular transactional email service offering a free tier for low-volume sending. It provides robust deliverability, detailed sending logs, and is well-suited for automated system emails like those generated by MIDAS. After signing up and verifying your domain, update your MIDAS SMTP configuration with your Mailgun credentials.

To update your SMTP settings in MIDAS, navigate to MIDAS Admin Options > Email and enter the new SMTP server details provided by your chosen transactional email delivery service.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

According to Microsoft, their revised SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication Deprecation Timeline is as follows:

• Now to December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication behavior remains unchanged.
• End of December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication will be disabled by default for existing tenants. Administrators will still be able to enable it if needed.
• New tenants created after December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication will be unavailable by default. OAuth will be the supported authentication method.
• Second half of 2027: Microsoft will announce the final removal date for SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication.

While Microsoft’s deadline is the end of December 2026, we recommend customers make this change sooner rather than later.

Email is a critical part of how MIDAS keeps your staff and visitors informed – from booking confirmations to reminders and notifications. A disruption to outgoing mail can go unnoticed until someone realizes they never received a confirmation, which can cause real-world scheduling problems.

Taking a few minutes now to update your settings will ensure uninterrupted email delivery well into the future. If you have any questions or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team – we’re happy to help.

The post Microsoft SMTP AUTH Deprecation in 2026: What You Need to Know appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

March 2026 marks 20 years since the very first public release of MIDAS. We first unveiled Version 1.00 of our room booking and resource scheduling software to the world on 11th March 2006.

Where it all began

Work actually began on MIDAS a few months earlier. In December 2005, Mark Harrington, the creator of MIDAS, was working in a brand new Performing Arts College – the first of its kind in Greater Manchester, UK.

This new school for students aged 11-16 boasted impressive state-of-the-art facilities. These included sports facilities, dance studio, 300-seat community theatre, outdoor stage, recording studios and rehearsal space.

All these spaces were available for internal use during the school day and for hire by external clients and community groups in the evenings, weekends, and school holidays.

Soon after the new school opened, the school appointed a Community Facilities Manager, Miriam. Her role was to oversee bookings and the smooth operation of the exciting new facilities. Demand from the local community was immediately high.

It soon became obvious that the software the school had been using for handling their room bookings was not up to scratch. It was simply not meeting the increasing demands on the busy new facilities.

The (now defunct) software named “VenueBooker”, was slow, cumbersome, buggy, and not very user-friendly.

After much discussion, frustration, and plenty of “wouldn’t it be great if we had a system that could…?” conversations, they soon realized that no existing alternatives did everything they wanted from an ideal room scheduling system.

The Problem That Sparked an Idea

Mark had a strong programming background. He was confident he could build something that covered everything a Community Facilities Manager would need — facilities, clients, and bookings.

So Mark sat down with Miriam and the two of them brainstormed how she wanted the software to ideally function.

Dozens of sheets of paper later, covered with all kinds of scribbled notes, arrows, and flow charts, Mark had something to go away and work on!

A few days later, Mark had a working prototype: MIDAS v0.01.

Mark named the software “MIDAS”, although to this day he has never confirmed whether that’s an acronym that stands for “Mark’s Infrastructure Daily Allocation System“, or “Miriam’s Infrastructure Daily Allocation System“(!)

Over the Christmas holidays of 2005, Mark worked diligently to develop and improve MIDAS, ready to deploy it at the school in the new year.

He even spent New Year’s Eve sitting in front of his computer at the stroke of midnight, coding away!

Within the first few weeks of 2006, MIDAS went “live” at the school for the first time. It transformed the way staff and external clients booked rooms.

Now for the first time, staff could check room availability themselves using just their web browser. The booking process was simpler, more efficient, and streamlined. Bookings increased substantially, revenue rose accordingly, and double-bookings were finally a thing of the past.

Going Public

Mark quickly realised MIDAS could help other schools and organisations facing the same challenges. Just a few months after the first internal prototype, he publicly released MIDAS v1.00 on 11th March 2006.

What began as a solution for one school has since grown into a trusted booking system that organisations across the world rely on.

Fast forward to 2026

For twenty years, MIDAS has evolved alongside changing technologies, shifting user expectations, and an increasingly competitive software landscape.

In that time, we’ve helped thousands of users in dozens of countries manage millions of bookings.

Our resource scheduling software remains in active development and we remain true to our original ethos of helping organizations of all shapes and sizes better manage their facilities and resource bookings.

Through browser revolutions, mobile adoption, cloud computing, and changing security standards, MIDAS has continuously adapted without losing its core mission.

New feature-rich updates are released at least three times a year, and many loyal customers stay with us for years.

Celebrating our 20th Anniversary

To coincide with our 20th anniversary, today we’re releasing the latest update to our MIDAS software, v4.42. Read about the new features in MIDAS v4.42.

Also to mark the 20th anniversary of our MIDAS room booking software, for a limited time – until 31st March 2026 – new customers get 20% off with Promo Code MIDAS20.

The Future

We’re tremendously proud to have been here for the past 20 years.

In that time, hundreds of competitors have appeared, many of whom were short-lived and have since vanished. MIDAS has stood the test of time.

To all our customers, whether you’ve been with us for the past 20 years, or just the past month – we appreciate you choosing MIDAS and sincerely thank you for your support! – You’ve committed to us, and we in turn continue to be fully committed to you.

New to MIDAS?

If you’ve never come across MIDAS before today (where have you been for the last twenty years?!) we appreciate that there’s a vast array of options out there today when it comes to choosing a room booking system.

Maybe you’re currently considering a change and are evaluating a number of different scheduling software solutions.

Whether you’re looking for a cloud booking or self-hosted booking system, a subscription or a perpetual license – we’ve got the facility management software for you!

When evaluating potential booking solutions, make sure you take into account 3 key factors:

• How long a product has been established?
• How frequently are updates released?
• How responsive and reliable is customer support?

With MIDAS, you get a solid product from a trusted booking software provider with a proven track record. You get a stable system that’s in active development with unrivalled support to back it up!

Did you know that we even offer a no-obligation free 30-day trial today? Get yours today and experience the reliability that has defined MIDAS for two decades.

Twenty years ago, MIDAS began as a solution to a single school’s challenge. Today, it stands as a proven, stable, and continually evolving room booking solution trusted by organizations worldwide.

If you’re searching for a system built not just for today, but for the long term, now is the perfect time to experience MIDAS for yourself.

Don’t forget – use code MIDAS20 at checkout for 20% off your first purchase or subscription. Offer ends 31st March 2026.^*

* Promotional Code valid until 31st March 2026 and is valid for initial MIDAS purchases or subscriptions only. We reserve the right to withdraw this offer at any time.

The post MIDAS at 20: Celebrating Two Decades of Room Booking Innovation appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

Over the past week, a significant and fast-moving controversy has unfolded in the AI industry – one that has caused us, along with many others, to take a hard look at which AI companies we choose to support and partner with.

We’ve decided to switch. From today, MIDAS is moving away from OpenAI and over to Claude, the AI assistant developed by Anthropic.

Here’s why.

What Happened

If you haven’t been following the news, here’s a quick summary. The US Department of Defense had been using Anthropic’s Claude AI on its classified networks – the first AI to be deployed in that context. As the contract came up for renegotiation, the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic remove two key restrictions from the agreement: a prohibition on using Claude to power fully autonomous weapons systems, and a prohibition on using it for mass domestic surveillance of American citizens.

Anthropic refused. Their CEO, Dario Amodei, was unequivocal: current AI models are simply not reliable enough to be trusted with lethal autonomous targeting decisions, and mass surveillance of citizens is incompatible with democratic values. The company had tried for months to reach a workable agreement, but the Pentagon’s position was that it required the ability to use AI for “all lawful purposes” without restriction – a standard that, as legal experts have noted, is far broader than it sounds.

The fallout was swift. President Trump ordered every federal agency to immediately cease using Anthropic’s technology. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Anthropic would be designated a national security supply chain risk. Hours later, OpenAI – having apparently been in talks throughout – announced it had struck a deal with the Pentagon to fill the gap.

Many of OpenAI’s own employees were furious. A number of them, along with other prominent tech figures, signed an open letter opposing the government’s retaliation against Anthropic. Sam Altman himself had written in an internal memo just days earlier that OpenAI shared Anthropic’s “red lines” – before going on to sign a deal that critics said those red lines were far less robustly protected.

The contrast in the two companies’ behaviour was stark and, for us, clarifying.

Why This Matters to Us

We’re a small UK software company. We make room booking software. We’re not in the defence industry, and the intricacies of US military contracting aren’t something we’d normally have strong opinions about.

But this issue isn’t really about US military contracts. It’s about what kind of company you’re doing business with – what they stand for, and what they’re willing to sacrifice to stay in favour with those in power.

Anthropic chose to walk away from a government contract worth up to $200 million rather than remove safeguards they believed were ethically essential. OpenAI, in the same week its CEO had privately affirmed those same values to his own staff, made the opposite choice.

We think that matters. The companies whose technology we choose to use reflect, in a small way, on us. And we’d rather reflect the values of a company that held its ground.

What We’ve Changed

We used OpenAI’s models primarily in two places within our products and workflows:

Miriam, our virtual assistant. When no live support agents are available, visitors to our website can get help from Miriam, our AI-powered chatbot. Miriam was previously powered by OpenAI. She’s now powered by Claude.

Code optimisation. As we written about previously, we’ve been using AI assistance to help our human developers optimise MIDAS source code – identifying opportunities to make our software run faster and more efficiently. We’ve switched that workflow from ChatGPT to Claude as well.

In both cases, the transition has been smooth. Claude is a highly capable model, and we’re pleased with the results so far.

We’re Not Alone

Claude surged to number one on the Apple App Store in the days following the controversy. Thousands of individuals and organisations made the same decision we did – not because Anthropic asked them to, but because the situation made the choice feel important.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t simply about picking a “winner” in a commercial rivalry. We genuinely hope the situation with Anthropic and the US government is resolved fairly and without further retaliation. Anthropic has, by all accounts, been one of the most thoughtful voices in AI development when it comes to safety and responsible deployment. The idea of that voice being sidelined – or punished for speaking up – should concern anyone who cares about where this technology is heading.

A Note on AI in MIDAS

As we’ve said before, AI is not taking over the development of MIDAS. Our software is, and will remain, built and maintained by our human team. But AI tools have become a genuinely useful part of how we work – and it matters to us that we use them thoughtfully, including being selective about whose tools we use and why.

If you have any questions about these changes, or about how AI is used in our products, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The post Why We’ve Switched from OpenAI to Claude appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

None of those very early 0.xx versions were ever made public and were instead used to test and refine the functionality of the software and to fix bugs.

The first “public” release, v1.00, came just a few months later in early 2006, which means that 2026 will mark MIDAS’ “official” 20th anniversary.

Our software certainly has longevity and a proven track record, and two decades later remains in active development. We regularly release booking software updates with new and improved features, and in this post we thought we’d summarize some of the highlights over the past 12 months.

💬 Unrivalled Customer Support

As well as the peace of mind our longevity gives to users, we know that customers also care about good customer service. This is just one of the areas that our customers regularly praise us for.

At the start of the year, we reviewed how responsive our support service had been over the previous 12 months, and you can read our customer support performance review.

♻️ Reduced Environmental Impact

Given our high levels of service, we clearly care about our customers. But we also care about the environment too.

As with any online or cloud-based business, computer and server equipment runs on electricity.

The Website Carbon Calculator is an innovative initiative which analyzes five key metrics to estimate the carbon emissions of any website.

Back in 2021 we were “greener” than 86% of all websites globally.

By 2025, we are now greener than 91% of all websites, and have reduced our carbon footprint by 5% over that period.

🇺🇸 US Tariffs

In April 2025, US President Donald Trump announced he would be imposing new ‘Tariffs’ on the majority of countries in the world, including the UK (where we’re based).

Concerned US customers were reaching out to ask whether the cost of MIDAS was affected by these tariffs. The good news was that tariffs only applied to physical or tangible goods – they didn’t apply to “services”, and therefore our prices for US customers were unaffected.

Politics aside, here’s what else happened in MIDAS in 2025…

⏱️ Staying “Signed In”

In April 2025, MIDAS v4.29 introduced a brand new “Stay signed in” option that truly allowed users to remain signed in between sessions. This was a game-changer for many who were frustrated at having to sign-in each time they opened their browser.

Of course remaining signed-in was something that could already be achieved with Single Sign-In (SSO) support via Active Directory – something MIDAS has supported for some time.

🔐 Improved Single Sign-On (SSO) support

In August 2025, for v4.40, we improved Single Sign-On support by expanding support to include SAML 2.0 Identity Providers.

🚪 Venues, Rooms, Spaces, and more

When we first came up with the concept of MIDAS two decades ago, we needed a term to refer to the “spaces” being booked. If you don’t know, MIDAS was originally written for a school environment, and we didn’t want to use “room” for facilities like sports halls or dance studios. We settled on the generic term “venue” to refer to a “bookable space” within the software, and this terminology has been in use ever since.

However, this year we introduced a brand new setting to replace the term ‘venue’ with something more applicable to what each organization uses MIDAS for. So if you’re a bowling alley, you can change the term to “lane”. Or if you’re running a complex of recording studios, you can change venue to “studio”.

🧾 Invoice Improvements

Invoicing is arguably the one area in MIDAS that receives the most user suggestions for new and improved features. That’s certainly not to say that the extensive invoicing capabilities of MIDAS aren’t good enough – it’s simply that every organization invoices differently – there’s no “standard that everyone uses”. That’s even more true as we have customers in dozens of countries around the world, and accounting/audit rules differ between jurisdictions.

Our most recent improvement to invoicing in 2025 was to support setting tax rates to three decimal places. Now, in most places in the world, tax rates are given to two decimal places, but there are actually a few exceptions!

Here are some examples:

• Washington (United States):
  Washington law allows certain local sales/use tax rate increases in 0.001% increments. 
• California (United States):
  California’s district sales taxes commonly use 0.125% increments. 
• New York City (United States):
  8.875% is the combined sales tax rate in New York City. It comprises 4.00% (New York State sales tax), 4.50% (New York City sales tax), and 0.375% (Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District (MCTD) surcharge).

Allowing for tax rates to be specified to three decimal places, ensures MIDAS can accurately support regional and local tax rules across different jurisdictions.

This year, we also made invoices searchable and allowed the order of invoice items to be changed. Plus we provided greater control over unsent invoices by allowing an administrator to specify a date each month when unsent invoices are automatically sent to customers. This improvement better accommodates organizations that typically invoice on a specific date every month.

⬇️ Import Improvements

The ability to import data into a MIDAS resource scheduling system is crucial. Many customers who make the switch to MIDAS naturally wish to import data from their previous venue booking system.

The import tool in MIDAS allows for this. However, every booking software application is different – there’s no standardized format for how an application chooses to store and present data.

So our import tool strives to accommodate as many different data formats and “peculiarities” as possible for maximum compatibility when migrating from other booking systems.

In 2025, we introduced support for importing ‘dynamic’ .csv files. Traditionally, a Comma Separated Values (or CSV file) contains “one record per line”.

Some booking systems export to .csv files in a non-standard way, where data may actually be split across multiple lines. MIDAS can now support importing such files.

MIDAS also now supports importing multi-venue bookings. Traditionally, each record or “row” in a CSV file containing bookings should equate to a single booking (i.e. one row = one booking). However, some booking systems, such as Skedda, export multi-room bookings (where a booking takes place across multiple bookable spaces) as single records.

When importing such data into MIDAS, the software can now correctly identify and process such records.

📋 Logging and Audit Improvements

Every MIDAS booking system includes a “Recent Activity” log. In this audit log, every user action which takes place in the booking system is timestamped and logged. This allows administrators to keep track of all activity occurring within the system.

We’ve made a number of improvements in this area in 2025, including:

• The Recent Activity log now differentiates between custom booking and client fields
• The Recent Activity log now differentiates between removed obsolete and unsent invoices
• Changing MIDAS core settings is now recorded to the Recent Activity Log
• Dynamically duplicated or moved bookings are more clearly identified in the Recent Activity log

👩‍💼New User Permissions

Audit logging is certainly very useful – but we also provide administrators the ability to set an extensive range of permissions to individual user accounts. In 2025, we’ve added two additional new user permissions:

• Allow a user to change their display name
• Allow a user to update their email address

📲 User interface improvements

The user interface – or UI – of MIDAS has evolved considerably since 2005. This has been driven by advancements in new web technologies, browsers, and style trends. At the same time, we also know that functionality and familiarity are also key drivers for our users.

We’ve made a number of UI improvements to MIDAS this year, including;

• A simplified Manage Booking Types screen
• Various UI improvements to graphs on Statistics screen
• Tooltips are now shown when hovering over graphs on Statistics screens
• New icons on the Manage MIDAS screen
• Several other UI/UX improvements

♿️ Accessibility Improvements

Accessibility on web pages and web apps simply wasn’t a “thing” back in 2005 when MIDAS was born. Today, it’s not only important, it’s an essential consideration for many.

We first built in keyboard shortcuts to MIDAS well over a decade ago, and not long after introduced a special “high-contrast” visual theme too. Since then newer technologies and accessible web standards have emerged, and we continually strive to make MIDAS more accessible with every update.

This year, we’ve made a number of tweaks including better contrast for text on the booking availability grid display on public booking/request screens. We’ve also revamped the included help documentation for our most recent update, v4.41, to make it more accessible.

✅ Optimizations

Whilst many of the changes we introduce with each new version are visible, many take place behind the scenes.

We frequently review the code that makes up our software, and we’re always looking for ways to make it more efficient and run faster. A couple of years ago we experimented with using AI to assist with code optimization, and the results were impressive.

We continue to use AI to assist with this task this year to realize some small performance optimizations Rest assured, we certainly don’t let AI loose on the source code, and a human review of all AI generated code optimizations is carried out before the changes are accepted.

In addition to code optimization, we also look at database query optimization. These are the “commands” that MIDAS sends to the backend storage database, and the data it receives back in response. Communication with the database is actually one of the biggest factors that can affect performance, and so any gains in this area are always welcome.

We’ve made a number of optimizations to both code and database queries in 2025 to further improve performance and responsiveness of our software.

➕ New Add-ons

This year saw the introduction of two exciting new optional “add-ons” for MIDAS, allowing you to;

• Create Zoom Meetings from bookings (optional Zoom Meetings add-on)
• Post Watch Notifications to a Discord server (optional Discord add-on)

🔎 Looking ahead to 2026

As we mentioned at the top of this article, MIDAS officially celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026, so watch this space for exciting updates in the coming months…

The post MIDAS 2025 Year in Review: Product Updates, Features, and Improvements appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

Since then, a number of customers have reached out to us to ask us if this will have any impact on the price of MIDAS.

The short answer is no!

As you may be aware, we’re a UK-based business. Whilst President Trump is levying a 10% tariff on the UK, the newly announced tariff plans apply only to physical goods traded between countries.

The tariffs do not apply to services, which include sectors such as banking, finance and legal services.

Our booking system, MIDAS, is a software product. We do not supply physical or tangible goods – we supply a software service.

As such, the recently announced tariffs by the US do not apply to the supply of our software.

Consequently, the price of our software remains unchanged. In fact, we haven’t raised our prices now in over 5 years!

It remains to be seen what wider global impact the tariffs announced by President Trump will have on economies around the world.

However, as it stands today (which at time of writing is 3rd April 2025) – we have no plans to increase our pricing as a result of the tariffs announced in the US yesterday.

The post Will US-imposed tariffs affect MIDAS software prices? appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

Here’s what new and improved in v4.38…

Authenticator App Support

Since 2015, all MIDAS room booking systems have included optional two-factor authentication (2FA). If enabled, this adds an additional layer of account security to our software.

With Two-Factor Authentication enabled, each time a user logins in, a code is sent to their email inbox. The user must then enter this code into MIDAS in order to complete their log in.

MIDAS v4.38 now additionally supports TOTP authenticator apps – including Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator – as an alternative 2FA login option – Read more…

2FA Per User Account

In addition to supporting authenticator apps, we’ve also made two-factor authentication a ‘per user’ setting, rather than a ‘global’ setting.

This allows administrators to set 2FA methods for each individual user account.

Reinstall Current Version

For self-hosted customers, we’ve improved the MIDAS installer to allow re-installing your current software version without affecting your existing data/settings.

So if you accidentally delete a core file within your MIDAS installation on your web server, you can re-install MIDAS without loosing any data!

Improved Security Audit

All MIDAS systems come with a built in ‘Security Audit’ tool to assess the security of your booking system. This tool may either be run on-demand or regularly scheduled.

For MIDAS v4.38 we’ve included a new check as part of these ‘Security Audits’. This new check will alert you if there are any ‘obsolete’ user accounts within your MIDAS system. An ‘obsolete’ user account is considered to be any user account which has not been logged into for at least 6 months.

Improved Booking Grid performance

The ‘Booking Grid’ is the main area where your bookings are visually presented within MIDAS.

We’ve made some improvements to the performance of the booking grid in v4.38 by reducing the amount of data that’s initially loaded when viewing bookings for any given date.

For busy organizations with hundreds of bookings across their venues in any given day, the amount of data being loaded in the booking grid was significant, and could lead to sluggish loading.

We’ve significantly improved this for v4.38, meaning that large quantities of bookings now load and display faster than ever!

Other Improvements

This latest version of MIDAS also includes stability and performance improvements and fixes for several issues that have been detected or reported since the previous release (v4.37) – View the complete v4.38 changelog….

How To Get MIDAS v4.38…

The post MIDAS v4.38 Out Now! appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

There’s nothing more frustrating than emailing a business for help and then having to wait ages for a real person to reply, right? Sometimes it can take days for any sort of human response from a business. And if it’s out-of-hours, a weekend or public holiday, this can further add to the annoyance in awaiting their response.

We do things differently!

We know that one of the key factors that sets our room booking software solutions miles apart from our competitors is our exceptional customer support. Not only are our support staff professional, friendly, and knowledgeable – they provide a fast response to queries too!

How do we know this? – Because our customers tell us!

“As someone who also works in the technical support industry, I am thoroughly impressed not only by the speed of satisfactory resolution but also from the fact that it was outside normal working hours!!!

I fully expected this to be picked up the next day and take a few days to fix.”

That’s recent feedback from a customer who emailed us with an issue at 5.40pm one Thursday evening. Within 90 minutes, we’d been able to diagnose and replicate the cause of his issue, update the customer, and seamlessly push an update out to his cloud-hosted MIDAS system to address it.

To ensure that we continue to maintain these high levels of service 365 days a year, one of the metrics we continually monitor is the speed of response to each Priority Support query.

In fact, we’re so proud of our responsiveness that we’re totally transparent about how our support team are performing. We even publish real-time live data over on our dedicated Service Status site.

As 2025 gets underway, we’ve also taken a few moments to review our support performance over the past several years. Here is how we’ve performed in recent times:

We also looked at the “average” response time across the same period:

Key Takeaways

• Over the past 6 years, our Priority Support service has achieved consistent response times.
• More than half of all Priority Support emails are responded to by a human within 15 minutes of receipt.
• In 2024, the average response time to a Priority Support email was just 28 minutes.
• Over the past 2 years, all Priority Support emails were responded to by a human within 5 hours of receipt, regardless of the day of week or time of day.
• Even during a global pandemic, our support continued to be robust and responsive.

Our rock solid uptime and unrivalled support are just a couple of the reasons our customers choose – and indeed stick with – MIDAS for their business needs year on year.

So if you’re considering a new room booking system in 2025, and have been frustrated by your existing provider’s lacklustre response times previous, look no further!

We think you’ll be hard pushed to find a product back-up by 365 days a year support as efficient as MIDAS!

But if you’re still not convinced, check out some more of our Customer Testimonials about our booking solution, and the outstanding levels support we consistently provide year on year!

Oh, and we’re also rated ‘Excellent’ on TrustPilot where you can read more reviews.

Have questions and not sure whether MIDAS is right for you? Why not reach out to our sales team (who are just as friendly as our support team!)

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